Camera Buffs

Thanks Jo, how's Mark going these days.

Cheers

G Day Ross.

Heck of a long story, won't bore you or myself with all the details!!! (nice aren't I!)
More complications than things running smoothly with dialysis.
A friend of ours is a perfect match for a new kidney. She has to lose 9kilos then when she is near goal weight they will start to put together the transplant co ordination surgery which supposedly would happen within one to three months of her reaching goal weight. So all going well it is nice to know that this won't be a drawn out year after year after year saga!.
Trust all is well on your end?

Jo

All in all that's pretty good news though ... from the outside looking in sorta perspective. I hope it all goes well and Mark is fine. Give him our regards and best wishes. I reckon there's a lot of larrikin
there just waiting in the wings.

From my end, all is sorta well. Still mis-behaving and playing up, so can't be too bad. Have a slight hurdle later in the year, but not in the same league.

Cheers

Yeh, jokes aside it is good news...makes me wanna wrap up my friend in glad wrap and chase her through the simpson to sweat the weight of her!!!!!!!!! Then life can go back to proper living!
God I hope there is a bloody larrikin in there just waiting to bust out!!!!!! (if he is in there he's been hiding for too bloody long!!!!)

What's your hurdle? doesn't matter whether you'd class it in the same league or not, whatever gets thrown at us can make us all feel just as crappy and interrupt our lives in a way that is not appreciated.

The bowel business is looking good. 6 years now and keep getting good reports, so that's all fine and dandy, and history as far as I'm concerned.

Now it's the old prostate jobbie. Didn't actually come as a surprise, as I was more or less expecting it. Strong family history.
Come October, I go in for Brachytherapy and follow-up external beam rad.

Probably should scoot out Boulia way afterwards to give the locals an extra Min Min light to talk about. I reckon I'll most likely glow in the dark LOL.

So ... as you can see, I'm not exactly jealous of Mark's issues. Kinda leaves me in the shade.

Cheers

Dang Ross... At 21 years of age... !!!!!!

Seriously though, that must be a lot on your mind in wondering and trying to prepare yourself for what you will be in for in the coming months. We can always think we are prepared for something but once your thrown in the middle of it you sit back for a minute then BAM! you think 'Holy Chite... just what am I in for and what are they going to do to me!'

"Probably should scoot out Boulia way afterwards to give the locals an extra Min Min light to talk about. I reckon I'll most likely glow in the dark LOL"

Love it Ross! that is the hard part, trying to keep a sense of humour about yourself and trying not to loss the plot. Mark being sick on top of other things, I'll admit it, I was starting to get ready for a padded cell!!!!!!!

Hi Jo,
Sounds like a bit of a hurdle your going through as well. I can certainly sympathise with you as my sister is in the same boat except she also needs a pancreas. But if her kidney fails before a donor for both is found then one of my kidneys is earmarked for her.

As for cameras, I didn't reply earlier as I have just got back from your neck of the woods. Drove to Bris for the day on Sunday to pick up an excavator bucket and had a look at a few new (Second hand) excavators
.
I do not really know too much about the Sony cameras but for the question you are asking. I generally use tiff format but that is for mag quality pics and they are 38meg each image. That way I can do work on them without a loss of quality. The loss from saving Jpgs is really not noticeable unless you resave it many times. I never use RAW as I cannot be bothered doing any work to them plus I have an attitude that you should never play with an image once it is taken.

For TV slide shows I think a medium quality would be fine but the best to do would be experiment to seee what works best for you. But just remember if you do happen to get that great shot you want to make into a poster then you will need as much information in that file as you can get.

Instead of slide shows have you thought of those photobooks that some of these mobs are doing these days?

Peter

Hey Peter!
(and just what did you have to bribe those girls with to pose with your vehicle!!!)

That is great that you've got one of your kidneys on hold for your sister! Just make sure that you have her post surgery gift bought and wrapped up to give to her.. Yep, what I am doing for Mark, a can of red kidney beans!!!! Corny I know but how could you let a moment like that pass by!!

Thanks Dave

That more or less confirms, what I've been reading. But I reckon it always helps to get a user opinion.

Cheers

You gotta be careful with your wording Trev. one slip of having stuck in "THE" and you'd of gotten yourself into a hole!!!!!!

Yep ....

I was thinking much along the same lines myself.

Thanks for the info.

As you can see, I'm a total novice in this area.
So, from what you say, I will get a better end result if I record and edit in AVCHD mode, then convert the final cut to MPEG2 ?

Could you expand on the differences ... to a video cretin LOL.

Cheers

Ok. When you capture in AVCHD you have a few option they are listed here:

HD FH 16Mbps (1920x1080): 880mins
HD HQ 9Mbps (1440 x 1080): 1780mins
HD SP 7Mbps (1440 x 1080): 2160mins
HD LP 5Mbps (1440 x 1080): 2880mins

But once you use MPEG2 the resolution drops to:

SD HQ 9Mbps (720 x 576): 1780mins
SD SP 6Mbps (720 x 576): 2640mins
SD LP 3Mbps (720 x 576): 5060mins

You can see now there is big resolution difference in HD and SD which when you use MPEG2 it only capture in SD. As to your question should you record in AVCHD then convert to MPEG2 after editing. I would prefer that way. In this way you still have the ability to put those footage in HD when blu ray becomes within your reach. If you start with MPEG2 you are stuck with it.

The next quesion now you might ask is what yields better quality if you capture from AVCHD then convert to MPEG2 or if you capture MPEG2 directly? Well I say if you choose to only want SD not HD. Then capture in MPEG2 straight from camera.

The quality of the video is based on resolution and bit rate. If you look at the spec I listed. you see the bit rate is listed in Mbps. Drop me a mail if you need more help.

Hope this helps you understand a bit more.

OK

I'm starting to get the gist.
One final question. Is there any particular software you'd recommend for converting from AVCHD to MPEG2 ?

Thanks again for your advice, much appreciated.

Cheers

Tell me more, please.

I was thinking of setting the aspect ratio to 16:9 (HDTV), with the image size to large (4592 x 2576 pixels) and the quality to fine (JPEG).

Is it the aspect ratio to which you were referring, or is there something else I should know.

Cheers

Re HD tv. Sony does something most of the others don't. It saves a second file buried in the jpeg or RAW that enables the shot to be seen in HD on an HD tv. (This makes Sony files slightly larger than equivalent files from other makes.) To do this you need a special mini HD connecting cable and you will find a special outlet plug on your camera for this cable. You can buy mini HD cables on ebay that do the same much cheaper than the Sony cable. This is NOT the same as the cable that comes supplied with the camera for connecting to normal tv (this will also connect to the HD tv, but you wan't see the pictures in HD mode. You then have to show your pictures through a device that has an HD output. The camera can do this but only when your pics are on either a compact flash card or Sony memory stick. (The A700, and I think, the A350 also) come with a remote control so you can use your camera to control slide shows when you view from the camera.)This is OK for viewing the shots you have just done but you need something else for a big collection of saved shots. Some use the Sony photo frame viewer, which also has an HD outlet. Some use a Playstation. There are other options.
You have a fantastic camera with some unusual features that are generally not understood in the marketplace. But it is complex.
Two sites you might want to know about that can give lots of help with this camera

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1037

Now the tricky bit. As another responder noted, jpeg is a "lossy" format. Each time it is resaves, the picture downgrades a little. I don't know how this effects the HD file, or whether if you save in another format such as TIFF, the buried HD file will be lost. I am also not certain whether or not the size of the stored file alters the picture quality depending on the size of the HD tv you have. I'll do some more research on this for you. This was a topic I was just starting to explore re my A700 and your post came up before I feel totally in control of all the details. This is llikely to lead to more lengthy posts so we might want to do this by email rather than posting here.

I see no reason to do repeated saves of JPGs. I edit the out-of-camera JPG and then save it as JPG. If I want to do any other edits I go back to the original JPG and so don't lose quality.

I save most of my images as JPG-only and have no problem with producing high-quality prints.

Early digital SLRs produced lousy JPGs and a lot of people can't move on from there.

I only use RAW in really challenging lighting - sunsets, backlighting.

Even sunsets I'm doing now with bracketed JPGs combined using automatic HDR software e.g. Paint Shop Pro X2.

Only Full HD TVs are 1920 x 1080

Standard HD is 1366 x 720.